 Right, oh, yeah Roger. I ate it as a kid I ate it like once or twice as a kid because it came in my little pumpkin jack-o-lantern For you didn't like it. I didn't like it. Yeah, I think I've got I've got all these like oh Halloween exciting walk around get candy and I think my parents always let us eat the candy corn first cuz they wanted to save the Good stuff and so I associate the excitement of Halloween with eating candy corn I just remember three quarters of my candy haul being that stuff. It would be candy corn It would be the what's the sugar the sugar things on the straws. They hated those. Oh, sugar. Yeah sugar straws Like they were like like the stupid anacids that masquerade as candy those little tablet You get those in your Halloween bag You know, they're just Like we consider good candy anything that was like a like even it was the fun size like a Snickers a Kit Kat, you know Pixie sticks pixie sticks That was a dealer of pixie sticks, what? Sweet sweet spree you could buy like a big bundle like at a store for like ten bucks And then you'd sell them like you just sell them for like three cents or a nickel each. It's nice. I Mean it would take a lot of money to take a lot of selling Roger Chang pixie stick dealer You need your pixie stick fix. I don't know a guy Listen, I got a line on some pixie sticks that coming in Thursday We think about it. It's just like mostly white powder in a tube grape. What are you kidding me? I can't get grape See what I can do. I think the most popular was the bread orange and then the green When junior high basketball games, I would always get spree The the hard shell coated like tart candies. I hate it those two. I love spree You know one year. I did get a cup of those cherry cordials. I thought we're kind of cool chocolate covered cherries. Yeah You know the ones know the ones you bite into and it has like rummy flavor or something. Yeah, I Love those. I love cherries. No, I was a sprees fan, too I'd get sprees. I Like those don't get spree the sprees probably gave me a lot of cavities and as a kid So yeah, they're real hard on your teeth. I think You're good. I like them better in bottle caps. Those are terrible. I Like the root beer bottle cap. Oh I've never tried this chewy spree candy by the pound But they're chewy. Yeah, those are the same. No chewy sprees are different than sprees sprees Oh, no, I'm thinking of root beer barrels. Oh Root beer barrels the ones I like Those are like hard Individually wrapped candies that looked like low donkey kong barrels, but yeah root beer flavor All right, we're gonna we're gonna tell you the secret history of nut neutrality here in a moment. You guys ready? Oh Control control control control is coming your way Roger As soon as I widen up my screen Woohoo, all right, all right here we go Daily tech news show is powered by its audience not outside organizations to find out more head to Daily Tech news show comms slash support This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday, July 12th Birthday to my wife 2017. I'm Tom Merritt joining me Scott Johnson is here and we are going to talk today Scott about the secret history of net neutrality. Yeah, I you know, I don't know The secret sauce quite yet, but all day that you've been kind of teasing me about a pattern you found It's very like Sherlock Holmes. I feel like I've got like string and pictures of Verizon executives up on the wall and I've cracked the code Scott I should have a big mustache, but I'm gonna do this instead just a finger now We're gonna go back and follow where all this started because I think I figured out where it started where the rhetoric began And why we've gotten to where we are today I don't know that this solves it or changes your mind, but it should help you understand the problem Better if you're wondering why if somehow you missed it several tech sites and apps have added messages to their services Wednesday urging customers to object to the FCC's current proposal to eliminate open internet guidelines established in 2015 Many sites are linking to the FCC which is taking comments on its proposal guidelines in question classify US ISPs at common carriers In order to enforce rules against favoring one kind of traffic over another in delivering internet service We're gonna get into all of that in a little bit, but let's start with a few tech things you should know 14 million Verizon subscribers records including PIN codes Were exposed on an unprotected Amazon S3 server by an employee of Israel's nice systems Nice provides customer engagement and anti-fraud services to 85 of the Fortune 100 companies and works closely with Surveillance and phone cracking companies Chris Vickery of security company UpGuard found the data in mid-June privately told Verizon the data was secured within a week and Came apparently from a log file of calls to Verizon customer service, which was being analyzed by nice systems So Scott, there's a couple of different concerns here You know one is that PIN codes were there two is that a surveillance connected company had this data But apparently that is something Verizon trust them with regularly the good news is it was discovered by Chris Vickery Potentially before anyone else. That's good, but 14 million subscribers I don't know what that is percentage-wise of their total subscribership, but that is a lot of freaking people. Yeah That's a big that's a scary piece of exposure. So not nice. No On nice. Yeah, and whoever that employee is at nice systems Should be at least educated in how to properly put things on an S3 server Yeah, probably escorted nicely out the front door S3 courted Apple's partnering with Chinese gojo. I looked it up. That's the correct pronunciation. Nice on the cloud big data to To establish its first data center in China. That's kind of cool The data center will help improve iCloud services for Chinese users as well as comply with regulations requiring data on Chinese Users being stored within China So that's a thing you always hear about these big companies have to adhere to this particular bit of Of law where they got to keep that stuff there They can't have it on servers outside the country which it is not great for how the internet is supposed to work You should be able to put your data wherever it makes sense to put your data And a lot of times storing it close to users is better for performance, but sometimes it's not For various reasons. So this takes away a little flexibility and the other thing Apple could come under the gun for is People question why the government wants this data located locally They say it might be used for oppression and Apple could be seen as partnering with that. Yeah Starting now anyone with an oculus rift headset can live stream from Facebook spaces through the Facebook live System people can view your VR stream on Facebook a virtual tablet shows what 2d viewers will see sort of like a camera's view finder Reactions from the audience come out of a tablet like magic mirror Comments will stack up next to that in VR features rolling out to spaces this weekend is only available on the rift at least for now Yeah, I'm just gonna say I I know that the future of oculus and and Facebook is definitely in the world of let's figure out a way to Socialize as much as we can VR and VR technology totally on board with that, but this seems Slightly dumb. I mean I have zero interest in logging in and trying to watch these streams right now Yeah So so I mean I guess it would be like hey I'm in virtual spaces with a couple other friends and I have this one friend It doesn't have a VR headset, but at least they can watch and talk to us now That's cool. I get that but if you're doing like let's say you're I don't know your live streaming I'm trying to give a but you know The advantage for the person seeing a live VR stream is that they see it in VR, right? They get to be in the virtual space It's a lot of work to get to that right now as it stands right now These are not devices. We just pop on our head and we're in and the way Facebook works is this very Sort of impulse sort of driven thing where I log in and I say oh my friend Tom is Doing something in VR put some on my head and I meant no it doesn't work like that right now right now I got to go find it or get it out of its place put it on my head adjusted. Oh shoot I'm not calibrated something's wrong with this USB cable. I better reboot like there's a lot of that going on And that's my only reason why it just doesn't feel like the reward is worth the work It's early days. Yeah, this is not going to be mass adopted. No question. Microsoft ended support for Windows 8.1 Late days end times you might say yeah for 8.1 This is on Tuesday leaving the Windows 10 mobile OS as it's only supported phone operating system Add duplex estimated 20% of Windows phones will run or do run Windows 10 support for Windows 10 mobile ends in 2018 With no word on an upgrade path. Yeah, I've seen a lot of headlines today say this is the end of Windows phone And if you don't read past that you're not getting the whole story They're saying that because 80% of Windows phone users don't use Windows 10 yet And they just ended support for Windows phone 8.1. So it it is a big move Microsoft has not pulled support for Windows 10 on mobile. So people should either upgrade or upgrade their phone That said Microsoft also isn't doing a lot to support Windows phone And we don't know if there's going to be a fall creators update for for Windows phone It doesn't sound like there will be so You know Microsoft's intentions regarding phones are still sort of up in the air. Yeah, and I I mean Yes, there's more to it. They're still supporting it sure but any other phone Slash OS maker for phones whether it be Google or or or even you know, it was obviously Apple but even you know Older phones that they're still being supported Usually what happens is they're talking about new releases and exciting new features and fancy new this and fancy new that and this is Microsoft going Well, we're ending support for 8.1 and still works and that's it Yeah, I understand there, you know, I understand people being skeptical about what may be the future for those things Scientists at the University of Washington have trained a neural network to match the mouth shape of a video To fit whatever audio is attached to it I'll explain that a little more in a second the demonstration took a video of President Obama So he was saying one thing let's say he's talking about Syria And then they replaced it with audio of sentences. He had spoken years before maybe talking about healthcare, right? The neural network grafted and blended mouth shapes into the video so that the new video matched the old audio One potential application could be to improve video conferencing So if you've got lag and somebody's mouth isn't catching up with their words This could keep them looking like they are Scientists were careful not to put any words in the president's mouth that he did not in fact say Although that is a worry is that people could use it for that They did indicate that there's a blurriness in the mouth region of their videos Probably not detectable to the human eye, but could be detected by programs If you want to make sure that a video is real or not well to me It's the Photoshop of video We all sort of knew this stuff would still I mean There's been other innovations and this stuff's gonna be coming where we can manipulate video in the way that we can manipulate Standard images and even though those are scientifically proven sometimes to be fake Oftentimes the damage is done if you've got somebody saying some stuff out of context or you know And you can actually you can actually fake people's audio now too There's there's other technology that does that so you combine those two together and you can make all kinds of crazy stuff Yeah, you may have a whole episode of the show one day where you talk just about the future of Not being able to tell Reality yeah, yeah, it's super interesting Activision Blizzard finishes things out today and has announced seven teams and owners for its Overwatch League Which we've been talking about since blizzcon of last year This will locate easy ports teams for the game in various cities before the end of the year teams in Boston, New York, LA Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Shanghai and Seoul will all begin competition among the team's owners are Robert Craft of the New England Patriots who owns the Boston Overwatch team Jeff Wilpin of the New York Mets That's right. The Mets are still a team of Mets fans love hearing that Owns the New York Overwatch team and from eSports Noah Winston Of Immortals were on the LA team and Annie Miller of NRG Sports owns San Francisco team Competition begins in LA and I just saw Shaq posted who's a big part of investor part of NRG Just posted a video on Twitter of him getting all psyched and excited about the northern California effort But that team's gonna make so anyway exciting times for over. I can't wait for the logos and the mascots And buy myself some LA Overwatch team gear. Mm-hmm. We're waiting line out in front of a Soldier 76 field and 76 feel that should be a Chicago team. Yeah, really Yeah, a staple center with my whatever things. Yeah, well, they will they name their teams around characters Do you think I don't know? I have a feeling not I think it'll probably follow Well, this is a really good question And this yeah, we don't know because the way it's worked in the past as teams are not necessarily geographically pinned Right, we're just you know cloud nine So they're cloud nine and and then each each player on the team Maybe has a weird moniker or whatever, but nobody's actually done the city thing So that's gonna be fascinating. Will they be the Los Angeles, you know spinners or whatever the names are gonna be? I don't know, but I'm very curious to find out and if they do will that help build The sort of regional fan obsession thing or or will that not make you think Kate said overwatch starter jackets for your for your favorite team absolutely a mom board I'm in Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Just to keep yourself up to date Efficiently be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines at daily tech headlines calm available on the Amazon Echo Domestically I can't get word out of Amazon why it won't come to the UK at other places But available on the Amazon Echo is a flash briefing and also on the anchor app at anchor dot FM And that is a look out of top stories All right, Scotty, you're ready for me to tell you the secret history Yeah, neutrality feel like okay Bernstein and let's say the guy's name go for it Woodward Woodward. I think this is my person That yeah, this is this is more of a story This is the background that you need to know now You'll need to know two things to understand where the story is going to end up and That is the definitions from the 1996 telecommunications act that differentiate a Telecommunication service from an information service. All right. So you ready? Yep a Telecommunication service is the transmission between or among points specified by the user of Information of the users choosing without change in the form or content of the information sent and received, right? So that's telephone. I choose to call Scott. I talk on the phone. I create the content The telephone company doesn't have anything to do with who I'm calling where I'm calling when I'm calling and what I'm saying They're like the air that carries the vibrations of my voice to you when we're having a conversation They just provide the wire and the connection, right? An information service is the offering of a capability for generating acquiring storing transforming processing retrieving utilizing or making available basically information via telecommunications and includes electronic publishing but does not include any use of any such capability for the management Controller operation of a telecommunications system. So an information service is cable television. You're not making phone calls over it You're you're you have a company who says we have all the channels. We have all the programs. We have the video on demand You are a subscriber and we tell you what you can get we decide what channels and you can subscribe to different packages to Get those channels, but we are offering a capability for making available information Yeah, and forget for just a second the cable then also in a modern context gives you internet access which can give you the Yeah, we're not we're not we're not to internet yet. We're in 1996 Right, the internet is just that thing that the beard guy with the beard in the back room does So there's telecommunications, which is your telephone. There's information service, which is cable easy, right? I get it two different things All right. So throughout the 1990s internet service providers were considered telecommunications providers So they were a common carrier and mostly because your internet was dial-up, right? It was over the telephone lines So it was a telecommunications service telcos because of that because of the rules of title to common carrier Had to offer their internet networks wholesale to other service providers You may remember those days when a DSL provider went back when DSL was super high speed because it was 1.5 megabits per second, right? DSL Was provided by other companies besides your phone company your your phone company would be the main provider But you get earth link DSL you get sonic DSL you get all these different DSLs because the law said hey This is a telecommunications service and just like with the phone wires If you own the wires you have to open them up and sell them wholesale You can you can have your own service on those lines, but you have to open it to everybody else, right? So you're with me now. I'm totally with you. I'll make sense. Yeah Internet is being provided over telephone lines runs by the same same rules as telephone. Well March 14th 2002 this all changes The FCC decides that hey, you know, it doesn't run over telephone lines cable You know who's providing internet cable That's not a telecommunications service anymore. Is it so the FCC decides March 14th 2002 that cable modem service is an information service and Not subject to common carrier regulation. This is where the trouble starts Scott. Yeah, the March 14 2002 is ground zero as far as I'm concerned for this issue This is what starts the trouble because now suddenly we have internet that's carried on phone wires That's not an information service But internet carried by a cable provider is an information service and as will become common in the story. We're telling Everybody sews so this goes through the courts and three years later June 27th 2005 The United States Supreme Court upholds the FCC ruling that cable modem service is an information service They get the FCC gets to define this stuff the Supreme Court says and without any any very Clear evidence that they're wrong. We're gonna let them define it So the FCC takes that win and of course on august 5th 2005 just a week or so later The FCC classifies wire line broadband internet service as an information service So they were able to make the modem thing stick. They're like, great We're not gonna have two definitions. Everybody's an information service They gave telcos one year to wind up those common carrier deals that had required them to open their networks to other dsl providers And removed the restriction on providing enhanced services. Now that is the next step They said, great. We've got all this information Service classification now. Everybody's on board. Great. And guess what you guys you can do those enhanced services that you want Where you charge people to deliver information You couldn't do that as a common carrier under telecommunications now your information service. You can do that Yeah, and oh, so oh five dark times right oh five FCC finally does that well, guess what Suddenly and you can guess who was asking them to do all this Suddenly in october 2005 Sbc southwestern bell's ceo ed whiteacre. He eventually became the ceo of at&t when they merged said Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free But i ain't gonna let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion They're using why should they be allowed to use my pipes the internet can't be free in that sense because we in the cable companies Have made an investment and for a google or a yahoo or vantage to expect to use these pipes for free as nuts Yeah, these pipes i like the term pipes It's always so suddenly suddenly from the internet is like telecommunications I tell you what i want where what i want you to connect to you connect and deliver me What's on the other side and that's it suddenly it's their pipes now Let's ignore that subsidies and pole easements and all kinds of things have been provided by the government to help them build These out suddenly it's my pipes and i want google to pay for them uh February 2006 john thorn a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel says The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers It is enjoying a free lunch that should by any rational account be the lunch of the facilities providers That's our lunch you can't have it wow I'd never heard that quote before that's insane. It's a great quote. I know Uh, this is what started people freaking out about net neutrality, right? The information service reclassification was just a precursor That these guys were waiting for to say great now we can provide enhanced services Let's start the campaign to say to make it seem Like google and yahoo are out here using our service that we built for free and then we can get Everyone on board to us charging them and then we can charge both ways That's not the way it worked everybody freaked out And you know we on buzz out loud started talking about this like wait a minute google does pay they pay to access the internet That's how the internet works everybody pays to get on the internet and then you interconnect and you come up with deals Well in 2007 so a year later comcast was caught interfering with bit torrent packets Let's leave aside whether they should be killing bit torrent packets Let's assume that all of these packets are linux isos for the moment All right Comcast was interfering with bit torrent packets and the fcc the republican chaired fcc voted to punish comcast for discriminatory network management practices Okay, they're like look you're an information service, but you can't do that. That's not okay They were literally discriminating between data packets. They were saying exactly data packets We are going to treat differently than we are going to do some deep packet inspection We're going to see oh is that a bit torn packet? Let's kill it, right? Fcc said we don't care why you're doing that. That's a discriminatory. You can't do that Well comcast got that fcc decision overturned in court because the court said We don't see the legal basis. You said they're an information service and now you're saying they can't do that But we don't get where you get to say that So in 2010 The fcc finally created rules against blocking throttling and paid prioritization And this was a continuing effort from the transition of of administrations It started under the republican in from in administration and was finished in the democratic administration and of course Verizon sued and got those 2010 rules thrown out and the court said We have no problem with these rules as such But if Verizon is an information service the telecommunications act lets them do all these things blocking throttling and paid prioritization That's what an information service does. The only way you can do this Is if you classify them as a title to common carrier a telecommunications service So in 2015 the fcc said fine, okay We're going to reclassify ISPs as common carriers to give the appropriate legal basis Recommended by the courts and let's be clear through all of this Verizon and AT&T don't really want to block and throttle They want to be able to charge for things. They don't even want to be able to charge for everything They want the freedom to be able to charge the big companies the googles and the yahoo's right And everybody agrees like pretty much, you know, mostly mostly paid prioritization and blocking and throttling should be off the table It's all about the wiggle room. So this is a big thing in 2015 because making them common carrier suddenly Changes the ballgame and really puts things against them being able to do any kind of enhanced services Yeah, I don't I can and here's the funny thing. I understand I kind of understand the idea Of somebody building something And then others coming to that thing And enterprising on top of it And doing well google yahoo whoever They came to the internet and said well, all right The internet needs these things so we're going to do this stuff and in the minds of these carriers They're like well you you're doing that on top of our stuff It should be us who's doing that or you should be paying us more if you're going to do it Like part of me there's a practical side of me that hears that and goes Okay, I kind of I kind of get it if you're going to build a I don't know. Let's say you own a lake and somebody wants to come ice fish on your lake. Well Maybe they you know, yeah Well, and that's that's the way the isps were we're pitching it the problem is the isps don't own the whole lake Right, they own it. They own one portion of the lake by their dock Now google went and built a dock on the other side of the lake and says great We want to we want to deliver things to your dock so the people on your side of the lake can get them AT&T said You got to pay us to get to our dock And google said but you're the only dock There's no other dock Yeah, if if you know these people ordered the stuff and I need to deliver it to them So it's it's toll setting right and you can decide like hey, you know what makes sense if you own the dock But you can also decide whether that's the way you want the system to work because remember the internet isn't owned by the carriers The internet is made up of all of the people connected to it. It's carriers. It's google. It's yahoo. It's cogent It's level three It's all of the people who either help packets get to the customers or deliver the packets that the customers want Or mingle them between the two That's the internet the internet isn't owned by any one person And the networks that the carriers built that allow some of those packets to get to their customers Were aided by the government in quite a large way. It's just like it's like trade routes in the 1400s It's how this feels to me and that's where I start to break from it I understand the idea that if I have to get through your gate to get anywhere You feel like you've got some sort of important Point of contact being the owner of that gate But then I don't have I don't have competitive advantage to go to somebody else's gate. You're the only gate Yeah, so if you're the gate and you just happen to be the thing that's called the gate They the carriers want the legacy of being a monopoly Yeah, uh To stay they don't want any competition. That's why they wanted to be reclassified as information services So they didn't have to open up their networks to anybody else They don't want it to be easy for anyone to go and attach their cables to poles and build out new networks They want to keep their advantage as a legacy monopoly But they also want the advantages of being treated as if it's a competitive marketplace So how let me ask you this question. There's a little one I want to slide in here How much of these companies when they make their own services to compete with the likes of google apple Whoever whether it's tv services or phone services or game streaming services or whatever it is The more they do those the more I see it come out of comcast at and t Verizon and so on The more I think that they're doing that So they have more ammo for cases where they want to claim they are information services Because literally they are building and making things very similar to all these other people who don't Also control the infrastructure don't control the gateways And how much so how much of that do you think is them seeing profit opportunities and customer opportunities? Or are they just seeing this as all right? Well the more information services things we do the better off We're going to be in court when this gets challenged from here till forever Now I don't think it's about the court because the court has a several times the most recent in february of 2015 When when the carriers were actually fighting against the FCC rules The court says look the FCC gets to define who's an information service provider and who isn't we're going We're basically going to let them decide So when the FCC made cable modems an information service, they said that's fine The FCC gets to do that when the FCC made everybody a common carrier. They said the FCC gets to decide that they get to decide Who does what? It would take It would take a hell of a court case to get the courts to determine that What the carriers want is they want the freedom to do anything they might want to do They don't necessarily have plans to make use of all that power They want as much power as possible as much freedom as possible to implement their business plans When the FCC made them common carrier one of the things you'll hear them say is ah, it's rate regulation It's it's burdensome Regulation from the 30s because the telecommunications act has its roots in a 1930s version Well, that's that's some of it's true. Some of it's not here's what the FCC did They said look your title to your common carrier so that we can block paid prioritization and throttling But we will forbear Which means they say these parts of title two don't apply to you Uh We will forbear most of the regulations So they did prohibit isps from blocking or throttling lawful internet content and to prohibit paid prioritization They said you cannot make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in rates practices or offering of services And you must import you must apply just and reasonable rates now That is where the real rate regulation comes in it's not telling you what you can charge It's not that part of title two But it's saying a customer can complain if they think your rates are too high and ask the FCC to intervene And if the FCC doesn't intervene, they have the right to sue you in court What the current FCC chair, aljit pye says is that's fine. That should be handled by the federal trade commission Not by the FCC So he's doing several things in this proposed rulemaking He says I want them to not be common carriers anymore Which will remove the legal basis for prohibiting paid prioritization throttling And remove the ability of customers to complain about rates and practices And put that under the federal trade commission Yeah feels like it's um I feel like we're not much further than we were in 2002. Do you feel like do you feel like we're I mean today, I'll tell you what you go anywhere on the internet today I went to twitch this morning to set up a stream and it had a huge red banner Support net neutrality. But here's a link. Here's a place. Here's all this stuff I thought, oh, that's funny and I went to a few other sites and they're all doing it today They're all doing it. Obviously it is in the best interest It seems like of everybody I know except for These carriers Well, yes and no, I mean essentially what happened was the internet was being regulated the way It makes sense to a lot of people to be regulated. It's a point-to-point system. I I Want to get the information off that server over there And so I tell you go to google.com and get me that information That's the definition of a telecommunication service. The telecommunication service is not storing that information They're not making available any of that information. They're just providing point-to-point communication I tell you the domain name the domain name system figures out the ip address. Sure But i'm the one telling you where to get the information And then you are delivering the information to me without changing it without storing it without deciding whether I should get it or Not. That's the definition of a telecommunication service, but They were worried about all this title 2 regulation So they wanted especially the cable companies wanted the the more favorable regime of an information service So they said hey give us that and but when they gave them that suddenly it caused all these other problems of like Well, wait a minute. Now you can do paid prioritization blocking and throttling We can't allow that and to be honest most people agree even many network executives at telecommunications company agree Yeah, that's not how the internet should work. We don't want paid prioritization blocking or throttling But we do want freedom to do these other edge case things and we don't want to be blocked So we want to be an information service. We promise we use our powers for good Uh, right and then other people especially companies that are providing their services over the internet like google, etc Are saying well, hold on a minute You say you won't do anything wrong, but let's classify as a telecommunication service because that makes sense And it also gives us the advantage of you never being able to do anything about our stuff Right So the only way to the only way to deal with somebody who says we promise not to use our powers for good and not evil Is to have some kind of regulation system of checking whether you when you I mean regulation can be a dirty word sometimes, but Well, yeah, whatever the term is I mean what's what is to stop Comcast from throttling other kinds of traffic or throttling bit torn traffic or whatever Here's why I wanted to tell you the 15 year history of this Is I think it has become evident that the FCC is not the best agency to determine this Because They're battling back and forth between two definitions that don't apply to the internet It's not an information service. Not actually a telecommunication service either Although you can run a telecommunication service on it Probably more like a telecommunication service in my way of thinking But the laws that were written in the 30s and in 1996 Have unintended consequences that you'd then have to go through this stance of forbearing things It needs new legislation and in fact john thune senator from south dakota Drafted legislation in 2015 that would have outlawed the online practices of blocking throttling and paid prioritization of legal content Over broadband cable and wireless connections And corporate owners of broadband infrastructure couldn't use their role to manipulate the internet experience Thune believes the biggest threat to network investment may be this instability Where hey aji pi just changed the rules, but guess what in four to eight years There might be a different commissioner from a different party and he'll change him back And and and if anything causes you to be conservative on investment It's not knowing what the rules are going to be Down the road. Yeah, also big shocker legislation from the 30s modified in 1996 May or may not apply to what the internet is today. Hmm. How weird like Nobody was thinking about things like netflix or giant broadband situations like that where you're moving huge amounts of data Like none of that was thought of so yeah, they got a that that's absolutely correct once in a while You got to say, you know, I like this old shirt. It's a nice shirt, but there are weird holes in it I got stains that won't come out time to get a new shirt And I get it the shirt store is pretty dysfunctional these days So if you cannot go to the shirt store and you can mend the shirt, I understand the motivation But sometimes you just have to realize you need the new shirt And that that is the unfortunate situation we're in which is why there's no easy answer to this The FCC is going to change the classification They it is very clear that it doesn't really matter what anyone does today And that's not to say you shouldn't make your opinion known you absolutely should But they seem very determined And then it's going to be another football of people suing and pulling it through courts And it's going to be bad for everybody So we had koker in our in our analysts slack point out battle for the net.com It's a great site dense with info well laid out detailed prepopulated email responses Though you can change those if you don't agree with what they're saying for you And they'll connect you buy phone or provide a phone number for you to contact your legislative representatives So i'm not telling you what to say But if you care about this issue, you should say something and you can you can go find that at battle for the net.com Or just look up your local representative if you're a us citizen who can vote and let them know What you think about this well said and find advice and do you think one final prediction from tom merit the internet's tech maven Do you think in 15 years? We'll be fighting over whatever the new legislation is because it didn't foresee the changes Or the technological beeps or I mean, yeah, whatever. There's a new tech It takes forever, you know the telecommunications act of 96 was talking about cable which came around in the 70s so It it always lags behind and and i'm not saying that it's a silver bullet Well, let's just make legislation because we all know how hard that is to make But at a certain point you got to stop dancing around the issue and point out like look the fcc shouldn't be making legislation that I get that they're trying to do an end around and they're trying to do a work around and it is not working It is absolutely not working. Yeah. Well, clearly clearly we're we're headed towards some sort of something and i'm very curious to see How it ends up But you know, you've basically laid out the best 15 year history of that i've heard about this subject So I hope people at home, you know, if you yeah, I hope I hope they find it helpful Thanks to everybody who participates in our show in all the different ways diamond club dot tv In chat on the sub reddit daily tech news show reddit.com It definitely helps us figure out how to put this stuff together for you today one person who participates Is mike range who does a monthly? entertaining roundup of the tech news if you get tired of all of this stuff and you just want to Smile about something you got to read monthly tech views and here's mike to tell you a little bit about his latest posting Hi, i'm mike range and like it or not. There's another monthly tech views ready for your consumption Here's a little sample In china users of bicycle sharing services are expected to double to 50 million this year Meanwhile here in the us 50 million of us are expected to just leave that french fry on the floor because bending over in the backseat of our uber is too much effort You can read the rest of the monthly tech views including a war games pun. I'm unreasonably proud of at daily tech news show dot com Real tech stories Really shaky analysis. Thank you mike And of course mike has some ebooks that collect all that stuff together. So go check that out at daily tech news show dot com thank you scott johnson uh for joining us and and providing the uh The the sounding board for me to slap all the history off of you today No, I appreciate it just from a the standpoint of this stuff can get really confusing and in some cases I think some parties involved want it to be more confusing. Oh sure. Yeah, so that we just sort of throw our hands up and go All right fine, whatever. I can't control any of this, but Um, I think today was was really good and i'm always always happy to be educated at your feet Uh, or wherever you are. It doesn't have to be a please just sit up. It's fine Oh, I'll put some shoes on too people want to uh follow more of what I've got going on in the world You can find me at frogpants.com scott johnson on twitter get a few cool projects coming up But I'll be here every wednesday as well. So once once again, thanks for having me on Yeah, and if you find this kind of topic valuable, uh, what we're doing here valuable We we don't take advertising. Uh, we are not subsidized by anybody's viewpoint except our own Uh, and you at patreon.com slash d t n s. That's entirely how we're funded Our hope every month is that we just get one patron more than the previous month So thank you to everyone who sticks with us and a uh a big encouragement to those who want to make this show continue To go to patreon.com slash d t n s Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 utc at alpha geek radio dot com and diamond club dot tv We're at facebook.com slash daily tech news show and our website is daily tech news show dot com back tomorrow with Justin robber young Show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Bob hopes you have enjoyed this brover Nice Thanks ace going good I learned a lot did you Good I did because I mean I kind of I mean it wasn't it's not like bitcoin for me anymore about right It's not quite that complicated But it's not always easy to understand the motivations like where everybody was at different times during this argument over the last 15 years Like what was their point of view? And there have been times where I've gone Yeah, like I kind of get it I get why these these carry Pist and then in those times like well, wait a minute You can only be pissed so far and then you start to realize well, all right The internet isn't what you're telling like they tell people the internet is a thing that it isn't so yeah Well, because we've spent 15 years with workarounds like hmm, you know what? Uh, there's a there's a loophole here in this in this law that was not written for us So let's drive a truck through it. Yeah, and then somebody goes. Hey, you can't drive your truck through there Hold on get back there You should be driving your truck over there and then Instead of saying hey, you know what? Maybe we should build a road that everyone can drive on or maybe it's hover cars now Or maybe it's a whole new way of thinking like that's Has to happen and I realize there's never like a utopian end game to these things. It's constant battle forever And that's probably good At least I think it is. Um, I don't think there's such thing as the perfect place to find where everybody's happy So you just keep you keep moving but The thing that stuck out to me when I made this timeline finally was the The timing of and the strategy of will make cable modems information services cable industry pushing for that telcos hanging back and then The once they win in court saying great now We can make everybody an information service and boom within months the telcos starting their campaign of like hey We're an information service everyone agrees So no free lunch google you don't get to just access our customers We built the city on rock and roll or on on wires And and and it's a it's a false narrative. Yeah, they didn't build their networks alone They had help. Yeah, I'm not saying that they aren't their networks They definitely own them and they should be able to run them to a certain extent the way they want But they're pretending as if you know that they own the internet And it's like well you had a lot of help running those networks from the governments of of america and You aren't to the entire internet But you've managed to look into a position where you don't have a lot of competition And you just got the FCC to change a classification to eliminate and a lot of the other competition So you're trying to get the best of both worlds. Hey, man, I'd love to get the best of both worlds, too Yeah, that'd be great. But what's it like in like, I don't know. That's a good example like in korea south korea And south korea They made it easy for any company to run wires So you can't stop some that we have all these poll access laws here We're like, oh, yeah, you can't run the polls without getting AT&T to come and move their cables All these things that get in the way in korea No in korea everybody can run their wires. The government made it really easy. And so you have multiple fiber competitors apartment complexes sometimes will have three or four different fiber companies running their wires into the building now that doesn't sound that efficient But it is competition Wow, yeah, and also the government encourages it in a way that doesn't exist here Oh, well, yeah, I mean part of it is like, you know We had all that copper wire infrastructure that we tried for so long Still do probably to to make, you know to stretch it out as long as we can Well, yeah, yeah, and that government encouragement that you're talking about roger takes the it's not subsidies It's it's not even unbundling. It's just basically saying no, you can't stop someone from building a network It just because you already built a network. I'm just thinking how crazy you would get Where like, um, so like a con cash charges a popular Uh, a destination like google or whatever and google is just fine We're going to roll out our whatever google fiber in these cities and then just say anyone who's on comcast can access any google services Because really what people want the internet for is the google is the yahoo is the netflix And maybe not so much the yahoo is it used to be but yeah, but but it's well taken they want the content Yeah, it's that the contents was driving them if they can get it wirelessly if they can get it over you know Another connection that isn't through a cable box They'll do it Ethan kane in our chat room says in south korea. There are ridiculous amount of wires run between the poles He says it's almost he says it's hazardous Um, but yeah, I mean that's that's how they made competition possible So there's there's probably a middle ground that that needs to happen there but You've got you've got these carriers out there lobbying cities to prevent Other networks from being built which is the opposite of what you need. Yeah, just total BS uh speaking of uh things Uh titles mr. Peabody and sherman discovered net neutrality Mr. Peabody It's 2002 sherman That's so nice for ryzen windows hangs up it hangs up its phone Hey, you get off my interconnect Uh sucker for a good interconnect joke uh facebook space is on your face photoshop a video happy birthday. I lean Everything you wanted to know about the nets, but we're afraid to ask are you with me ass tom? I'm with you says scott All right lines and tubes You scott says yes Yeah, I get it. I get it for net. Nutri is Net. Nutri is Nutri is uh that rodent It looks kind of like a beaver and uh And a capybara crossbred. They were brought over from brazil, but they're all over the swan playing in the south They brought them over um in any case next fake statement information as a service The internet is a series of pipes. You're just reading them now, aren't you? Is that peas yahoos? The Mets are still a team Barely Sorry, that's man. Hey, why do you put it pick it on the Mets? I don't think they're having a bad season I don't know why I just I think it's they they're that team that just always gets well in the 60s. Yes Yeah Like even like read more recently like you know, whenever like when john stewart was still on he was always complaining about how His team the Mets were just well, that's a yeah, everybody always complains about how their team sucks unless they're winning Yeah, that's true. Yeah, but isn't that how you determine whether their success if they're winning usually Usually wins are the main losses don't bring butts to the bleachers Unless you're the clippers for years, I know they're good now, but for years the clippers sold lots of tickets Even though they weren't very good people needed something to do Then Steve balmer bought them and they got good. Yeah, and what happened there? That's a 39 and 47. They're not in last place, but they're not doing great um Mr. Peabody and Sherman discover net neutrality I I I'm I would like to go unless you guys object with the secret history of net neutrality. Yeah, I like Just because I I feel like this is an important episode and that is the at least Confusing title for the uninitiated 100% Unconfined net neutrality. I'm confusing for the uninitiated You're suggesting that as the title Oh, just uh, just a general, you know gentle like option I'm like I wish giggle fiber would come out here. Why are they stuck in manrovia and Arcadia there has to be just need to move a little west Well has to do with pole access and And impediments to rolling out your fiber all that stuff When did fox news or sorry fox sports.com go pure video. It's all video. Oh weird. I never go there. So Uh, when they found it's cheaper to just do video and write original content I guess so. I mean it literally though. I don't think that's true. I look at it's way more expensive to do video No, I mean they can just repurpose all there. Oh because they're already doing the video Yeah, then they don't have to pay writers. Yeah, they're not doing original video content This is all stuff from their various shows. Yeah, that makes sense But it's just pages and pages of video. That's all it is No, I get what you're saying now roger. That's right. They're like, hey, why are we paying this web staff? When all we need to do is post these videos that we're already making Neil we like you, but uh, it's cheaper to do it this way I hope yourself to some pre sodas on your way out Are you street address? Oh, I just put my zip here The problem with a lot of this stuff is that The right thing to do is also the tactic for the opposition Right not changing the regulations And actually pushing for legislation is a slow business Even though that is probably the thing that you need to do and the thing that you've needed to do for 10 years And everybody for 10 years is saying, yeah, but that'll take 10 years Well, if we'd started trying to do it 10 years ago, maybe we'd have it And instead we have this ping pong game that's been going on since 2002. This isn't new I think that was the biggest thing that I really realized in digging into this story today It's like this isn't brand new Ajit Pai isn't the first one to change things It's just it was a little bit under the radar in 2002 because not as many people use the internet Well, he'll be created with the man who broke the internet and released the US internet I should nobody broke the internet the internet's not broken yet still working And I've said before I don't think this change in regulation is going to be the thing that that breaks the internet either It just won't help it will further the instability Yeah, just The way putting it death by a thousand cuts or Cuts by a thousand deaths or just uncontrolled hemorrhaging What do you choose? No, I don't and I don't think it's gonna People underestimate quite often The pressure of public opinion So even if the carriers get there all their dreams come true I mean remember it was legal for Comcast to throttle bit torrent They want a court case that made it legal for them to throttle bit torrent They stopped throttling bit torrent because people complained to high heaven about it So, you know it I'm not saying it's a guarantee that complaining will get a company to change but It's it's a pressure. It's a thing that can happen and it can stop some stuff. Yeah, even in those cases the market can You know, I mean if you if your reputation is so tarnished by poor corporate behavior You you you are motivated to not do that at least generally speaking. Yeah Comcast is probably sick of being the evil their Darth Vader of You know as long as they can get away with what they need to make money doesn't matter for them No, but that's what I'm saying They could have kept through throttling bit torrent and got away with it and made money and had the raa and mpa on their side And they didn't Because public opinion was so vocal against them that they said, you know what that's not worth it That's good. That's going to harm us It's not again. It's not a guarantee. You can't say oh, well, don't worry. We don't need any laws public opinion We'll solve everything because no But it is a pressure that I think it's discounted Yeah, I I agree Oh sonic oh wait 13. Oh, you're looking for an isp. Yeah No So I'm hungry really good I'm hungry too Yeah I'm trying to eat. You should eat before the show roger should make It's weird because I always assume the show's around noon. Yeah, it's not Yeah, it's just like I eat at 11 o'clock Yeah, what do you do? What's your air? Like what's your color work intake at 11? What do you do? I? Generally, it's not always the same, but I generally have a salad Uh that has like some kind of beans in it some kimchi lettuce tomatoes vegetables And then sometimes I'll have some dave's killer bread sometimes not depends on how hungry I am Okay, interesting oh I go to sonic and they're saying They say send letter to the ICC pause for net neutrality day pop up window sonic the isp is Yeah, like when you go to their site they have a pop up now that makes sense because sonic Is is one of the isps that's running into the problem of hey We can't expand to the places we want to expand because the incumbents are keeping us from doing so with all of these bureaucratic hurdles And things like that Sonics like this really proud. I mean I don't even live there, but I know I have them all the time they're this prime example of like Figuring out a way to be competitive in that ultra weird closed down system and right and Customers love them and you know like you want that kind of thing to thrive and survive and If they're being hindered that's a that's a bummer It's what I like to call legacy money yeah legacy money Like a legacy podcast legacy money Street signs is a dead end sign considered a street sign I guess so probably Oh, okay. Doke. Thanks everybody for watching. I hope you got something out of today's show that helps you clarify your thoughts Yeah, I hope so too And may you have a pleasant rest of your thursday or whatever day it may be where you are